I went to Vitam to climb on Thursday and I went to Rocspot to climb on Thursday. I climbed twice this week because the Wednesday session went so well. The reason for which it went so well is that I am climbing regularly again. I climb at least once to twice per week, which is nothing by some standards but better than in the last two years.
We started on Wednesday by climbing top roped routes to warm up. In the process I decided to take harder routes. I climbed up routes that were graded from 6a to 6c. The beauty of climbing top roped is that you can familiarise yourself with more challenging routes and experiment without a fall being as bad.
If I was lead climbing the route then I often feel the need to be certain that I can make the holds up to the point where I can make the next clip. With top rope I can try and fail without consequences. During this climbing session, I tried and failed several times on the 6c.
Trying and failing is a sign of progress. It shows that my fear of falling is diminishing and that my desire to summit, and my desire to succeed is increasing.
There is the added pressure that whereas in the Lausanne climbing group I was in the middle of the group in terms of ability in this group I am the more experienced climber so if I can lead climb routes I can leave behind the rope for them to top rope and practice. All of us are learning and by pushing the envelope of our abilities we progress.
Making such progress in February is great because Spring and summer lie ahead. Spring, Summer, and even Autumn climbing seasons are fun. Summer is all about the rock climbing, the via ferrata, hiking and cycling. By getting a good level indoors as winter comes to an end we are primed to have fun outdoors.
Live distribution of sports such as Rugby, Football, Tennis, Skiing and other sports is easy to justify because of the audience size. Rock climbing and live distribution of this sport however is harder to justify because it is a niche sport. Sponsors exist and interest in the sport is growing. We see that there are a number of climbing events, via ferrata groups are popular, the number of local climbing gyms is increasing but for a mass audience to watch these events is still unlikely.
I noticed recently that recorded as live climbing events are available on youtube and that we can watch two to three hour broadcasts of these events. If you are learning to climb and if you want to perfect your climbing technique then these broadcasts are excellent because you can watch exactly what the climbers are doing. You can see where they put their feet, which hand they use for a certain hold, how they balance their body on the wall and how they clip in the rope. In effect these videos are climbing lessons for the youtube generation. You can imitate climbers with the same physique as you. You can really watch the climber try hand holds and foot holds. “Does it feel comfortable? No, then I try this, ah yes, this is comfortable.” Watching this process teaches the average climber to be methodical about finding foot and hand holds. In climbing you need to look up and down. You also need to look for small movement opportunities. Moving a foot up five to ten centimetres can make a hand hold easy to access.
People have been rock climbing for generations but it is making its way in to the mainstream. Recently Rock climbing was accepted as an Olympic discipline and we will see this sport at the 2020 olympic games. As this is a sport that requires strength, agility, stamina and intelligence it is a natural, although modern, olympic sport.
By May we may be able to go back to doing sports in groups as long as they are not “contact sports” in Switzerland. For me this means hiking, running cycling and other related sports. For me climbing is a contact sport because we touch the same hand holds as everyone else climbing the routes, we use the same ropes and we share quickdraws and belay devices.
This being said I also have no desire to do sports like climbing at the moment because they require us to stand around and socialise and I haven’t really socialised in at least 38 days. I need to ease back into the world of the extrovert. Hiking is a good way to do that.
Visual Studio Code
Today I started watching a course on Linkedin learning about using Chrome for webmastering but got distracted with the idea of installing a server on my mac book pro. I then got even more distracted by Visual Studio Code.
I like this piece of software because it’s free, intuitive to use and quick. A few days ago I had spent hours playing with another html editing tool and the process was so laborious that i wasted a lot of time. With Visual Studio Code it’s fast and I’m getting through the task of making the old part of my website mobile friendly.
The process is interesting. The more pages I optimise the more experience I gain and the more efficient I become. I found that if I remove some bits of code the page is mobile compliant within two or three steps and I can move on to the next page, and the next one after that.
In theory these pages should always have been mobile friendly because they’re light. There is no CSS or other clunk. Images are also small as bandwidth was an issue in those days. It still is, but we have a firehose rather than a syringe today.
Webmastering is great because time really flies when you’re working on a website. You can easily spend ten or more hours a day working on something and still have a few more hours of work. That’s why some professions look so busy compared to others. Of course it’s time consuming because I am still perfecting the work flow. By the time I’ve optimised every page I’ll be proficient at an updated skill.
TikTok
Last night I was unable to focus so I installed TikTok and looked at plenty of videos to clear my mind enough to be able to think about dinner. I must have been in the right frame of mind because I enjoyed quite a few of the videos and flooded my facebook timeline with examples. Don’t worry though, out of the flood I only got one like. It seems that no one saw the flood so it didn’t happen.
1SE – One Second Every Day
More in character with me is the One Second Everyday app. I created a compilation for every day of quarantine so far but I won’t share the video too frequently because it will be most effective when it has at least sixty more days.
Climbing in Saint George is interesting for those living or working between Nyon and Morges. It provides routes from 4c to 7a and above and should cover most skill levels. Access time is a few seconds. You park your car near the lumber yard and a few seconds later you’re at the climbing wall. The image below is to show how short the walk is. It is also there to facilitate your finding the place should you want to climb here. I mention this because Sunday someone said that she liked to go to various climbing walls but that she often found it a challenge to spot the correct location.
The site that you see in this image varies from 4c to 6a+. The gradient is slightly positive so you are more likely to slip than slide. Most of the routes start easily but getting to the end is the challenge. Some of the finger holds are tiny and it’s better to use new shoes. I’m using old worn out climbing shoes so my traction is not optimal so I climb using my heels when possible.
To the right of the image above you have a small path that leads to a nice rock surface that is overhanging. Under this overhanging rock you find traces of barbecues, mattresses and a few quick draws. The climbing here is technical. It starts from 7a onwards so is more interesting for those climbers with the finger strength and endurance to attempt sustained overhanging climbs.
[caption id="attachment_3311" align="aligncenter" width="576"] Saint George Overhang climbing[/caption]
This is a nice location and if you walk further along, to behind the location from which I took this picture there is a cavern. This site looks interesting and yesterday there was an interesting sound. In a nearby valley or clearing Swiss military were practicing with .50 calibre guns. I called it artillery but a former British Marine classified the type of gun.
Indoor Climbing and the Apple Watch are a bad mix. They are a bad mix because the Apple watch has an unprotected glass screen. The screen is so exposed that last Thursday I shattered the screen without realising until I got home and tried to use it but the capacitive screen did not respond.
At first I couldn’t see anything so I tried to feel it with my nail (whatever is left of it after an evening of climbing) and I could hardly feel anything. Eventually by trying to look at the surface with light from different angles I could see two distinct cracks in the screen splitting the screen in to three distinct segments.
If I was your average smartwatch user I’d say that this is normal because smartwaches are made to be intelligent, not solid. I’d then point you to the fact that I have had suunto diving watches, Suunto feature watches and then Suunto Flagship watches such as the Ambit 2, 3 and then the Suunto Spartan watches. The Suunto Ambit 2 and Ambit 3 survived years of climbing, both rock climbing and via ferrata.
My Apple Watch Series 3 was “accidentally damaged”, the way Apple describes the condition of my watch, after just three climbing sessions. I had bouldered once, climbed once indoors, and once outdoors without issue. It’s when I went climbing indoors the second time that I must have done something to hairline fracture the glass.
In my humble opinion, with over 700 tracked activities with Suunto devices without issues, Apple is fatally flawed. In my opinion a smartwatch should be designed so that the screen is protected. The screen should be designed to survive what life has to throw at it. My Suunto Ambit 2 and 3 have had countless impacts on rocks over the years. You can see on the bezel of my Suunto devices that they have countless scratches. The glass however is fine. You need to look carefully to see any sign of scratches.
It is with this in mind that I strongly feel that Apple should take responsibility for making a device so mediocre that it gets cracked while climbing indoors. Indoor climbing is on wooden panels and fiberglass holds. It’s not on granite or other hard rock surfaces. A watch screen should survive this environment.
Replacing the watch screen via Apple would cost 230 CHF without taxes, possibly about 250 CHF with taxes. The watch itself cost 397 CHF new. It goes without saying that I did not ask for the unit to be fixed. It is because of Apple’s poor design that this watch suffered damage and it is Apple’s responsibility to replace the unit free of charge.
I didn’t drop it, I didn’t smash my wrist against something. I didn’t even know the unit was damaged until I got home and tried to use it. Fitness tracking watches should not be this fragile.
Last night after about a year without climbing I finally returned to the sport and I saw a familiar face but I couldn’t remember why. Eventually, I remembered that it was Cedric Lachat. I remember him from some climbing videos I watched. I also saw many of my climbing friends.
On the first belay I made sure to remember all the skills. It had been a while but when you’ve belayed hundreds of people the skills have become muscle memory. What was less comfortable were the first two climbs. When you haven’t climbed in a while you have to get used to being high above the ground and trusting that you took care of fixing your equipment correctly. I did so I continued climbing.
By the third and fourth climbs I felt more comfortable getting back to climbing up to 6a for three quarters of a route before not trusting myself on a move three or four moves from the top.
As I haven’t climbed in so long I thought that I would be rusty but this is due to two or three outdoor climbs where conditions are diferent. You don’t have colour coded rocks to show you the route.
I think that watching pros climb has helped, I think that cycling for hours a week has helped and I think that lifting a fifteen kilo weight in a number of different ways has also helped. Cycling really strengthens the leg muscles and improves the cardiovascular system and lifting a 15kg weight works arm, shoulder and back muscles.
The biggest difference when I was climbing yesterday is that I had brand new shoes, shoes that I had used for climbing just once before. Whenever I went climbing before I was using old shoes that were worn and had holes in them as they were hand me downs from friends. I had plenty of grip and for once they were tight.
This morning I tried riding around Watopia. Previously I had tried GCN training sessions with the indoor trainer but as I had no power meter I had to guess that I was making the right effort and guess that the pedalling rate was correct. With Zwift I don’t need to guess anymore. This software measures my cadence with the suunto sensor as well as the wheel speed to measure my speed and thus wattage.
The aim of this training session was to produce 130 watts of power for 3 minutes, rest and then repeat this 10 times for a training session duration of 50 minutes. I liked that it provides you with a window of power within which to stay for the required periods of time. It is useful to have a window within which to stay because there is a little lag between the power it requires you to alternate between and what the sensors detect. It works better for efforts lasting for more than a few seconds as you synchronise the power produced to the power you’re aiming for.
If you want a more detailed look at Zwift’s features you can click on the video below.
One of the reasons for which this film is so powerful is that it’s written in the way that Heinrich Harrer wrote about the Eiger. It’s documenting not just a single attempt but the entire process. In doing so we get to know the people well. It gives us some context about their early days and then it spends a big amount of time on the process that led to a succesful ascent of the Dawn Wall.
When we watch short films about climbing we sometimes see the trials and errors but those trials and errors are over days and weeks, not seasons and years. It documents the process by which Tommy Caldwell spent years exploring the entire rock face to find a route that was practicable. This is the level of detail that we got in The White Spider. You even have some of those ice falls in this film although only briefly.
One of the nicest moments in this film, and in this story, is when Tommy Cadwell gets to the Wine Tower and decides that, instead of continuing up the climb he would wait until Kevin Jorgenson made it across pitch 15. That’s a great example of friendship, companionship and compassion. It’s great when people suspend their own goals for another person in this fashion. That’s what makes climbing and practising other people so much better. It’s finding people that want you to succeed as much as they want to succeed themselves. “I don’t want this victory to be alone,”
I also like how this film is shot. I like the use of tight shots on the hands, of tight shots on the feet, of shots from down in the valley looking up and of wide shots where you see the climbers and the crew filming. I also like the use of timelapse. This, to a great degree is a modern day cinema verité film in that it captures life as it happens. It doesn’t use fast cuts, plenty of music and other devices.
It does have some great mapping of the routes on that wall. These maps are used to show the routes that other people have created, the routes that he climbed to get to know the wall and then the routes that he opened himself. The most fascinating use of mapping is when you see all of the variants that he explored before climbing the Dawn Wall successfully. You see a few metres here and there, you see how some create longer routes, and then you see the variants. You also see the gaps where they’re facing a challenging climb.
I think that one of the strengths of this team is that it’s made up of a boulderer and a rock climber. With this combination you have two distinct climbing specialities, that when combined offer a great pairing. One example is the dyno move. As a boulderer part of the game/art of this discipline is being able to make jumps that catch tiny finger holds. The strength of having a rock climber is that he has gained experience of climbing techniques, route finding. In this case the fact that Tommy Caldwell has spent so long studying this problem is that he knows the climb by heart.
I would definitely recommend watching this film if you like climbing as a sport, like reading about climbing and like watching it. I would also recommend it if you want to see a film about collaboration and compassion. How it was filmed and edited is also worth the time. I never found bits long or boring. It’s an excellent film.
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